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POULSSO. WN. 

1920 




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THE WORLD'S 
HOPE 




«/<». llikati 

POULSBO, WN. 

1920 

Copyright Applied For 






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THE WORLD'S HOPE 



When mortals are thinking and feeling hard, 
'Twixt nightfall and midnight larger; 

They sometimes meet with a dreamland bard, 
On his mystical star-spurred charger, 

Who takes them to realms where things transpire 

That freeze their hearts or set soul on fire. 

And thus I was feeling and thinking deep, 
'Till I glid through the gate of slumber, 

One night when I met in the vale of sleep 
This rider of mien high and sombre. 

He took me to realms of visions rare; 

Some that were terrible — some all fair. 

The right to see, and the truth to know 
Methought that my soul was yearning: 

To roam where rivers of history flow, 
From poles to equator burning; 

To see the things that at present are 

With flying sail or with broken spar. 

So on he brought me on steed of night, 
My heart quest to give an answer. 

To have a soul-filling wonder sight 
From the back of the dreamy prancer. 

And tell to others the things I saw 

That night of vision and full of awe. 



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I found not there the yearning of my heart 
Who fain would draw a rosy, sun-kissed chart. 
It is a painting gloomed with nightfall's murk 

brushes 
Where thunders roll, and lightnings cut, 
And angry torrent rushes. 
I fain would chant a melody to make your spirits 

glad; 
But O, how can I, when my soul is filled with 

pain, and sad? 

He took me through the creation mute, 

Where friendly elements working 
To serve the man and to keep the brute 

Is also a fell foe lurking 
With devastation and death to all 
That venture under its thundering mall. 

I saw the creatures of earth and sky 
And those under sea wave breathing, 

Where all are born, but in turn to die, 
Avast with vanity seething. 

Where strange corruption on lordly seat 

Has all and everything under feet. 

I saw the lands of this whirling globe 

In pristine and present splendor, 
Where nation veiled in its glory-robe 

Must unrobe to power grander. 
Where Nimrod's Kingdom with sword is built 
On stones where blood of a race is spilt. 



I saw the city, where traffic hums 

And idleness hunts its pleasure; 
We groaned our way through its stinking slums 

Of wasted eternal treasure; 
Through huts of want and through courts of greed ; 
Where hearts are merry; where sorrows bleed. 

We entered the igloo of Eskimo, 
We called on the palm-tree-dweller; 

We went to the palace where guests bow low, 
We groped through the prison cellar. 

We knocked at the gate of the labor lord, 

We stood in the shade of the workman's gourd* 

It seemed a creation that had no rest 
Nor righteousness in its possession, 

A bleeding, corrupting, festering nest, 
Whose day was a tale of transgression. 

Whose heart was a void— an aching sore; 

Its labor — turmoil; its pastime — war. 

Then asked I my guide through the mystical 

realm, 
What King was standing at Creation's helm. 
If hatred there was law— since all must fall and 

falter, ? n ,--■• 

If evil was its god and death its greedy altar. 
If in creation's Gilead there was no balm nor care. 
Or, whether worse for woe, perchance there was 

no doctor there? 



Then, one by one, in their shading ranks, 
There came up the world's physicians; 

Her optimists and her cynic cranks — 
Great doctors for all conditions. 

They all were honest, and all were sure 

Of diagnosis and final cure. 

I saw their patient — great Mother Earth — 
In a thousand kinds of bandages; 

From that of tear-cloth to silken mirth, 
Through a thousand of mournful stages. 

All do their best with their knives and drugs 

But, lo! their patient her sick bed hugs. 

They sat there and watched in the chairs of Time, 
In hope and despair of her gaining. 

They felt her pulse from her youth to prime, 
They watched as her day was waning. 

They searched the universe for the balm 

That might award them the victor's palm. 

I wondered, for they were men of skill, 

And mighty masters of learning. 
I wondered more when I saw her bill, 

And thought of her age-long yearning. 
Her bill of blood, and her price of woe, 
That reach as far as her cycles go. 



They sat there at last with their wisdom spent, 
Each shaking his head in bewilderment 
Over this living, woe-laden sphynx of the ages 
With no haven in sight on the sea where the soul- 
storm rages. 
From life or death removed — no sage or bard can 

tell how far 
On this dark night of clouds and storm without a 
guiding star. 

I sought the aged, who are the wise, 

And asked for an explanation; 
They told me the story of Paradise, 

And of a perfect creation. 
They said that man had a healthy start, 
But met a rebel and sold his heart. 

And, seeing man as creation's head, 

Leapt into Lucifer's hellness; 
The rest was cursed with that chaos dread 

Of a blood thirst foul, and a moral fellness; 
Till earth and air and all man's domain 
Were all infested with peace-fled pain. 

They showed me also a serpent's trail 

Prom Eden through all the ages; 
I heard his hiss through the bloody gale 

That swept over history's pages. 
Alas! for man! he had fallen in 
With heaven's author of death and sin, 



They told me also of Christ the Just, 
Who came and asked for the sceptre; 

But Him men laid in the gory dust, 
And added their darkest chapter, 

And forged the chains He had come to break, 

With double links for Abaddon's sake. 

O man! O mortal fell! what hast thou done? 
There rose upon thee heaven's healing sun. 
You blotted out that light when joined to Satan's 

legions, 
You dragged away the Son of God to hell-dark 

judgment regions ; 
And slew the Prince of Life upon the cursed 

rebel tree. 

earth! how can your woe be healed? 
How can your soul be free? 

1 sat there and thought in a soul-sunk doze, 
When a voice through heaven was pealing. 

The sky was all in a stony blaze; 

The earth like a drunkard reeling. 
I heard, as it were, all the oceans roar 
And groan with the woe of the doom it bore. 

With seals and trumpets and bowls of wrath 
It shook all the realms of Abaddon; 

The wicked fell in its blood-flamed path 
Till it hushed in the Armageddon. 

Where I saw a serpent fast-found — he fell 

And sealed above him the pit of hell. 



Sudden it felt like an infinite hush 
Had fallen on storm-tossed creation; 

It seemed to beam with a virgin blush, 
And rise from a new coronation. 

The sun in a sevenfold, soft-rayed, light 

Displayed the earth to my wondering sight. 

The atmosphere had a startling change, 
The pole swere breathing with summer; 

The equatorial burning rouge 

Was breezed by an Arctic hummer. 

The deserts bloomed like an autumn rose, 

The sea was calm with a strange repose. 

The ravenous forest rangers were there, 

But not in a bloody arena; 
The cow was feeding beside the bear, 

And the sheep beside the hyena. 
A scene of peace, and withal I saw 
That lion like oxen were eating straw. 

There were the birds of their thousand kinds, 
From the wren to the giant eagle; 

They all assembled with peaceful minds, 
In their pomp of a plumage regal. 

They chirped and sang in a thrilling burst, 

And all seemed to say, "My neighbor first." 



In a vision-dive I beheld the sea, 

Where the tribes of the deep congregated; 

They, too, were having a jubilee 

Like the morning they were created; 

The shark had become the herring's friend, 

Wars in the deep were at an end. 

No poison lurked in the serpent's fangs, 

No fever in swampy regions ; 
No plague was giving the earth its pangs 

And death — it had lost its legions. 
Disease and sickness were exile sent, 
And lo! the tombs of the just were rent. 

No doubt you wonder how it was with man, 

If he had also his health again; 

If now had come for him that golden age of bless- 
ing, 

That time of harvests sure, and no more want 
distressing. 

That time of ware all gone, and earth enjoying 
perfect rest, 

That mournful absentee of ages here at last, at 
last! 

The earth responded to lesser toil, 
With a thousand-fold to the planter. 

And, tares-free, like the Eden soil, 
From utmost bound to its centre. 

No drought or frost to be feared or fought 

Nor hopes of harvest to come to naught. 



Men clamored not for a six-hour day, 
Nor struck they for higher wages; 

AJ1 got a just and a princely pay, 
And lifted their heads like sages. 

Their work seemed play, and their toil a song, 

And life a festical, ever-long, 

Men bought and sold, but there was no greed, 

Each acted his "brother's keeper ;" 
There was no widow, or child of need, 
Nor blood-hounding fortune sweeper, 
I heard of no hell-fanged profiteer, 
Nor of commodity sold too dear. 

No one would grab for his brother's throat, 
Nor reach for his neighbor's pocket. 

No yard was feeding a temper-goat, 
No eye filled a coveting socket. 

Nor did I wark any rein-loose lusts 

Nor hear of slander and heart-aimed thrusts. 

It was sort of Sabbath in politics, 

And soap-box speaker's vacation; 
And with the wireless rapid clicks 

They sent the news of each nation. 
There was no secret diplomacy, 
And all the air was suspicion-free:. 



There was no racial antagonism, 

No tribal feuds were recorded; 
The peoples were like a glory prism, 

And all the nations unsworded. 
All vows were sacred to state and hearth, 
No funeral followed a treaty birth. 

Methought I sat there a thousand years, 
And watched the Millenial glory; 

I saw not a single flash of spears, 
Nor sighted a deathbed gory. 

Men died in peace, Methuseleh old, 

Then rose again in a deathless mold. 

What brought about this change so wondrous fair, 
In sky, in earth, in sea, and everywhere? 
It looks not like the fruit of bloody revolution, 
Nor like that drunken dream of mortal's evolu- 
tion. 
It is so unlike all that man before has ever seen 
Since Eden's gates were closed, and day of man 
was ushered in. 

Well, then of a sudden I heard men pray 
From pole to pole of their dwelling. 

To One their homage they all did pay, 
And ever His praise was swelling. 

There ebbed and flowed, on the earthly rim, 

A song of glory to Him ; to Him ! 



"The Highest ruleth! The Christ is King! 

And ceased has creation's sighing. 
Let all the peoples their tribute bring 

To Him who did conquer dying. 
To Him who did wear the crown of thorns, 
And broke, on the cross, Lucifer's horns. 

To God, who became a man to save 
A world that was lost and stranded, 

To Him who rose from the shattered grave, 
And high to heaven ascended. 

Who won Him a Bride on earth, and then 

With clouds of heaven came back again." 

And lo! I espied a blazing throne 
On earth and on cherub resting. 

Seated on high there a Being shone; 
They called Him the Everlasting. 

Lo! rays did flash from his pierced hand, 

And round Him all the Redeemed did stand. 

Then down from all heaven's infinite space, 
And up from the abyss yawning, 

And from the winds of the human race, 
Where kingdoms saw nightfall and dawning, 

They sang to the Name that set men free, 

And all creation did bow the knee. 

*^— , .r sy^. ' 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

mi. 



018 394 490 3 



Hollinger Corp. 
P H8.5 



